from Poona," Thresk agreed.

"But don't you see, this trial that's coming along in Calcutta makes all
the difference. It's known I have got it. It's not safe here now and no
more am I so long as I've got it."

One question had been puzzling Thresk ever since he had seen the look of
terror reappear in Ballantyne's face. It was clear that he lived in a
very real fear. He believed that he was watched, and he believed that he
was in danger; and very probably he actually was. There had, to be sure,
been no attempt that night to rob him of it as he imagined. But none the
less Salak and his friends could not like the prospect of the production
of that photograph in Calcutta, and would hardly be scrupulous what means
they took to prevent it. Then why had not Ballantyne destroyed it?
Thresk asked the question and was fairly startled by the answer. For it
presented to him in the most unexpected manner another and a new side of
the strange and complex character of Stephen Ballantyne.

"Yes, why don't I destroy it?" Ballantyne repeated. "I ask myself that,"
and he took the photograph out of Thresk's hands and sat in a sort of
muse, staring at it. Then he turned it over and took the edge between his
forefinger and his thumb, hesitating whether he would not even at this
moment tear it into strips and have done with it. But in the end he cast
it upon the table as he had done many a time before and cried in a voice
of violence:

"No, I can't. That's to own these fellows my masters and I won't. By God
I won't! I may be every kind of brute, but I have been bred up in this
service. For twenty years I have lived in it and by it. And the service
is too strong for me. No, I can't destroy that photograph. There's the
truth. I should hate myself to my dying day if I did."

He rose abruptly as if half ashamed of his outburst and crossing to his
bureau lighted another cheroot.

"Then what do you want me to do with it?" asked Thresk.

"I want you to take it away."

Ballantyne was taking a casuistical way of satisfying his conscience, and
he was aware of it. He would not destroy the portrait--no! But he
wouldn't keep it either. "You are going straight back to England," he
said. "Take it with you. When you get home you can hand it to one of the
big-wigs at the India Office, and he'll put it in a pigeon-hole, and some
day an old charwoman cleaning the office will find it, and she'll take it
home to her grandchildren to play with and one of